#depthofknowledge

Exploring the Concept of Depth of Knowledge

Using different texts across Lexile bands and using activities that address different skills, you can effectively implement Depth Of Knowledge (DoK) in your ELA instruction.

The Center for College & Career Readiness emphasizes this:

In essence: To master "complexity", one needs to understand, recall and apply.

The "Nutcracker" activity on Frolyc demonstrates to you how to implement DoK in ELA keeping this key idea in mind.

1. Present text along with video.

This specific text for the Nutcracker is at Lexile band 460. 

2. Pose questions addressing DoK-1 & DoK- 2

For DoK-1, pose simple questions that make students recall information from text, understand the meanings of words in text, see how the words relate to each other etc. 

In multiple choice quiz, you can address DoK-2. Here, students have to associate information that they already know to the current context. E.g. genre of the text that they just read.

3. Analyzing & organizing information - DoK 2

Analyzing and organizing information may fall in DoK level 2 based on the information presented.

Presenting information read in a different format like drawing, addresses Dok-2 as well:

4. Writing for DoK-3

Writing short passages while quoting details from text is a DoK level 3 skill.

As you know, Frolyc is a tool that gives teachers the latitude to implement it in many ways. In this post, we describe the design of a simple elementary grade Math Addition activity using Depth of Knowledge (DoK) levels.

The activity is Reindeer Math - Addition Within 20

Here are some quick facts about this activity before we dive deeper:

This activity has 6 activity pages.

This activity is aligned with Common Core Standards (2.OA.B.2 , 1.OA.C.6) for Grades 1 & 2.

The activity pages are designed using Depth of Knowledge levels & Bloom’s thinking skills.

This activity uses a Reindeer theme to establish a real-world context.

For each activity page in this activity, you will read about its design intent, its level on the DoK chart based on complexity and the associated thinking skills per Bloom's taxonomy.

Page 1: Introduction to Reindeer

Design Intent: Associate a real-world context that can be used in subsequent activity pages when applicable. This also establishes interest.

DoK Level 1 for reading

Bloom’s thinking skills involved: Knowing

Page 2: Practise addition facts

Design Intent: Practise facts in a simple, standard way that is familiar to the student

DoK Level 1 for recalling facts

Bloom’s thinking skill involved: Knowing

Page 3: Analyze addends and sort by their sum

Design Intent: Use simple facts in a way that asks the student to compare. It also presents the addition task in a non-standard way.

DoK Level 1 for recalling with some cross-checking.

The complexity level of this is same or only slightly more than that of Page 1.

Bloom’s thinking skills involved: Knowing, Understanding

Page 4: Calculate sums, compare in-memory & sort in certain order

Design Intent: Add complexity to task and involve different mental faculties.

DoK Level 2: This task requires more than one mental faculty - the student has to use factual knowledge to calculate the sum, remember the sums in short-term memory, mentally compare the sums and then sequence them in a certain order.

Bloom’s thinking skills involved: Knowing, Understanding, Analyzing, Applying

Page 5: Word problems

Design Intent: Use word problems to trigger mental processes in calculating, using logic and using real-world contextual knowledge.

DoK levels 1 & 2: Some questions are straightforward falling in level 1. Some have added complexity, thus falling in level 2. Complexity is added by having students use logic or use cues from real-world to solve the problem. In this case, the students use simple known characteristics of a reindeer to perform calculations.

Bloom’s thinking skills involved: Knowing, Understanding, Analyzing, Applying

Page 6: Constructing equations

Design Intent: Have student construct equations. Assessment is based on the type of numbers chosen to create the equation. Did they create simple 2 + 1 type equations? Or did they create equations involving multiple digits like 234 + 4567?

DoK Level: Regardless of the numbers used, this will be a DoK Level 1 task as the complexity involved is minimal.

Bloom’s thinking skills involved: Knowing, Understanding, Synthesizing

We have thus taken a simple Math concept and designed an activity for it that addresses two levels of Depth of Knowledge and more than one type of thinking skill.

You can design and create such activities yourself on Frolyc. Your students are bound to love them!

Here are slides with the above content for you to view & share:

Elementary Math Addition Activity With Depth Of Knowledge Levels from Frolyc

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